Every week for more than 13 years, I have been pouring tremendous time, thought, love, and resources into Brain Pickings, which remains free (and ad-free) and is made possible by patronage. It takes me hundreds of hours a month to research and compose, and thousands of dollars to sustain. If you find any joy and solace in this labor of love, please consider becoming a Sustaining Patron with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good lunch. Your support really matters.

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Brain Pickings has a free Sunday digest of the week's most interesting and inspiring articles across art, science, philosophy, creativity, children's books, and other strands of our search for truth, beauty, and meaning. Here's an example. Like? Claim yours:

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Also: Because Brain Pickings is in its twelfth year and because I write primarily about ideas of a timeless character, I have decided to plunge into my vast archive every Wednesday and choose from the thousands of essays one worth resurfacing and resavoring. Subscribe to this free midweek pick-me-up for heart, mind, and spirit below — it is separate from the standard Sunday digest of new pieces:

Versions: The Purpose and Repurposing of Images

Originality, recycling, and why everyone is stealing from Disney.

By Maria Popova

The evolution of remix culture is something we’re quite fascinated by — from the notion of originality in creation (how similar is too similar?) to the moral tensions of sampling and borrowing. That’s exactly what occupies artist Oliver Laric in Versions, a visual essay about the re-appropriation of images, the borrowing of intellectual property and the manipulation of visual media.

Narrated with a no doubt intentionally robotic voiceover, the essay is as much an eye-opening exposé on the unabashed visual recycling in popular culture as it is a bold defense of the importance of creatively borrowing from greats of yore. From Greco-Roman sculpture to quantum physics, the essay explores the multifaceted dialogue about visual culture and the nature of authorship.

I express unlimited thanks to all the authors that have in the past, by compiling from remarkable instances of skill, provided us with abundant materials of different kinds. Drawing from them as it were water from springs and converting them to our own purposes, we find our own powers of writing rendered more fluent and easy, and relying upon such authorities we venture to release new systems of instruction.” ~ Oliver Laric

As remix culture continues to thrive in the grey areas of art and legislature, it’s fascinating to observe how different creators grapple with its complexities and interpret its blend of opprtunities and challenges.

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Every week for more than 13 years, I have been pouring tremendous time, thought, love, and resources into Brain Pickings, which remains free (and ad-free) and is made possible by patronage. It takes me hundreds of hours a month to research and compose, and thousands of dollars to sustain. If you find any joy and solace in this labor of love, please consider becoming a Sustaining Patron with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good lunch. Your support really matters.

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Sunday newsletter

Brain Pickings has a free Sunday digest of the week's most interesting and inspiring articles across art, science, philosophy, creativity, children's books, and other strands of our search for truth, beauty, and meaning. Here's an example. Like? Claim yours:

midweek newsletter

Also: Because Brain Pickings is in its twelfth year and because I write primarily about ideas of a timeless character, I have decided to plunge into my vast archive every Wednesday and choose from the thousands of essays one worth resurfacing and resavoring. Subscribe to this free midweek pick-me-up for heart, mind, and spirit below — it is separate from the standard Sunday digest of new pieces:

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